An Unusual Guidebook to Kazakhstan's Southern Capital

7 Interactive Maps of AlmatyMade by Walking Almaty​

Anybody who has dug around Walking Almaty knows that I believe in the illustrative power of a good digital map. In various entries of my little encyclopedia here, I've supplemented my photo collections and essays with maps of mosaics, pedestrian paths, and canals, all made with delightful ease on Google Maps. There are several more maps that I've designed, though, that I never got around to sharing because I couldn't find place for them in the existing entries of my Walking Almaty "catalog." I still feel like they deserve to see the light so, for your amusement, here are seven interactive maps of Almaty exploring the city's architecture, music, industry and more.

1. A Map of Almaty Streets Named After Musicians

One thing that many visitors to Almaty find striking is the high regard Kazakhs hold for the arts, a tendency that's reflected on local maps. In other cities of the world, streets may be named after generals and politicians, but in Almaty major streets are often named after musicians and poets. Tourists are tickled to see the familiar names of Russian writers like Gogol and Pushkin on street signs, but there's a whole world of Kazakh national culture that can be discovered just by learning the biographies behind names that are more obscure. One day, I had an idea: what if people could walk down Qurmanghazy Street and hear the plucked dombyra of this steppe composer? What if they could turn down Külash Baiseiyitova Street and hear the virtuosic chirping of the opera singer's arias? Locals could connect street names already familiar to them with songs they've never known, and visitors could explore a musical world while familiarizing themselves with the city.

After much research and careful plotting, I put together this "musical map" of Almaty. The red lines are streets named after musicians and composers from Kazakhstan, while yellow lines are streets named for foreign artists like Bach. Dots stand for busts and statues dedicated to musical figures, usually found in parks and squares. If you click any of these elements, a box should open up that allows you to read a short biography that I've written in English (or borrowed from Wikipedia), along with a YouTube clip of the musician's work. By exploring the videos, you can "walk" Almaty's streets and hear everything from folk to classical to rock (one quirky landmark in Almaty, after all, is its Beatles statue!). Enjoy!

2. A Map of Almaty Streets Named After Women

This map was actually commissioned from me by a friend named Dinara Assanova, who has a project called Women of Kazakhstan. Dinara is interested in bringing more attention to the contributions women have made to the history of Kazakhstan, contributions that are often overlooked in a patriarchal culture. For evidence of gender imbalance in Kazakh society, just look at a map: the vast majority of street names are named after men. To highlight this oversight, we made a map of every street in Almaty named after women. There are only thirty, but behind ever street is a famous female whose story is waiting to be told.

3. A Map of Tsarist-Era Buildings in Almaty

Almaty was founded as an outpost of the Russian Empire in the 19th century, yet few buildings remain from the pre-Soviet years. The city was devastated twice by earthquakes, in 1887 and 1910, and ambitious city plans during the Soviet era meant that many old structures were cleared to make way for new apartment blocks and administrative buildings. Tsarist-era buildings in Almaty, characterized by their log and adobe construction and wooden ornament, are a rarity in the center, yet are found by the dozens in historic neighborhoods like Malaya Stanitsa and Bolshaya Stanitsa. Using data from a government map that identifies the year of construction for nearly every building in the city, I made this map to highlight Almaty's Tsarist-era architectural heritage and to encourage both locals and visitors to explore these charming districts.

4. A Map of Historic Buildings in the Golden Quarter Neighborhood

The center of Soviet Alma-Ata, and one of the most elite neighborhoods in modern-day Almaty, is popularly called the Golden Quarter. This central district is filled with dozens of charming buildings in Constructivist, Stalinist Empire, and Soviet Modernist styles, yet it has never been thoroughly mapped or defined as a distinct tourist destination. What's more, few people can agree on where exactly the district begins and ends - most concur that the southern border in Abay Street, but while some definitions put it at only six blocks wide, others suggest the borders are more expansive. With this project, I tried to determine the scope of this architectural district so that its heritage can be preserved and promoted.

Using the same akimat data as I used for my map of Tsarist-era buildings, I plotted noteworthy architectural specimens in Almaty's center, assigning colors according to their decade of completion: brown dots are pre-Soviet, yellowish dots are from the mostly Constructivist 1930s, orange and red for the Stalinist 1950s and 60s, and shades of blue for buildings from the Modernist era that began in the 1960s; clicking on the dots shows the original name of each building in English, along with the year(s) of completion. With the data plotted, it becomes clear that the center of gravity is the so-called Old Square, now known as Astana Square, located along Tole Bi between Abylai Khan and Panfilov. Many argue that the Golden Quarter ends not far west of here, but I personally place the border of the historic center way father, along Sharipov Street. Mid-century master plans for the development of the city seem to stop at this street, and looking today at a satellite map, it's clear from the greenery and the grid that this is some kind of border. On the map, you can see my idea of the Golden Quarter's borders, along with a couple other suggestions found online. Local Almatians, what do you think?

5. A Map of Almaty Museums

Museums are a common destination for any tourist in Almaty, but only three are visited with any regularity: the Central State Museum, the National Musical Instrument Museum, and the Kasteev Art Museum. Almaty has up to 37 museums, though, and I've made it a mission to visit every one. On the map below, the yellow dots are the museums I've been to, and the red dots are the ones I haven't. I've been to over a dozen, but I've got a lot of work to do!

Most of the museums here are one- or two-room affairs, hard to find but consistently rewarding. Many visitors to the city will get to see the Academy of Science in the Golden Quarter, but few know that there are four mini-museums hiding inside: a rare book museum, an archaeology musum, a science museum and a history museum. Many visitors see a performance at the Abay Opera and Ballet Theater or the Mukhtar Auezov Kazakh Drama Theater, but few know that both have their own museums dedicated to Kazakh performing arts. Perhaps the most fun discoveries of all are Almaty's "home-museums", previous residences of famous figures that have been preserved as shrines and research centers. You can visit the log cabin home of Akhmet Baitursynov, who invented one of the first Kazakh alphabets, or explore the surprisingly modest apartment of the Soviet-era leader of Kazakhstan, Dinmukhamed Kunaev. If there's one more museum I'd recommend, it's the Almaty City Museum, which just moved to a beautifully-restored Tsarist-era building.

6. A Map of Soviet-era Factories in Almaty

Almaty's tourism authorities would probably never think of sending guests to the city's rundown old factories, but there's a whole contingent of travelers who prefer dark tourism, ruin porn, and Soviet industrial sites to history museums. Access to former Soviet factories is limited, with zealous security guards and scary dogs, but I thought it wouldn't hurt for more information to be out there about Almaty's industrial legacy. I had heard about the Almaty Tobacco Factory, which was largely run by Pontic Greeks shipped here by Stalin; the Kirov Metalworking Plant, which was once the world's largest torpedo factory, and the Almaty Fur Plant, which turned sables and weasels into fine fur hats. Yet it was only when I found a directory of Soviet-era Almaty factories online that I had the data to make a full-fledged map. You can see that industrial zones, or promzony [промзоны], were highly concentrated, with major areas around modern-day Zhetisu District, Suyunbai and Rayimbek. Be safe and have fun exploring! One lucky journalist got to explore the long-suffering Kirov Plant, and if her amazing photos are any indication, the secretive concrete walls of these sites conceal a world of Soviet labor, frozen in time.

7. A Map of Soviet-era Collective Farms in Almaty

The last map for you to explore is a subset of my Almaty Neighborhood Map project, devoted to identifying and documenting Almaty's diverse districts. With my research partner Aisana Bekisheva, I've set out to write a book about the history of Almaty's peripheral neighborhoods, and the first chapter we're tackling will be about the ring of former collective farms, or kolkhozes, that surround the city center. When, in the mid-20th century, Almaty was much smaller in size, these satellite villages were strategically arranged in a ring around the urban core, keeping the city constantly supplied with meat, dairy and produce. Since independence, the city has sprawled tremendously, and these former farms have become so enveloped by suburbia that they they've nearly lost their former identity.

This loss of historic identity is all the more tragic when one considers the narrow scope of contemporary histories of Almaty. Even though the city's borders have drastically expanded, every historical account of Almaty acts as if the old borders live on, with the only place of any significance being the center, the "Golden Quarter." I've been to schools in these suburban kolkhozes and seen pictures of "Almaty" hanging in the hallways, and every picture is of famous buildings from a downtown that's far, far away. How must these kids feel when they think that Almaty is somewhere "over there," and not inclusive of their own home and existence? And how can they learn to build a community if they don't know that their neighborhoods have long histories of their own? We hope that with maps like these and the oral histories we're collecting, we can reaffirm these neighborhood identities and their importance to the city of Almaty.